Silence Over Dunkerque

by John R. Tunis

  They glanced around in the dimness. The café was empty.

  “Bon soir, Madame,” said Gisèle mechanically.

  The woman half smiled at them and continued slopping the greasy water over the tumblers. “Bon-jour, tons et toutes.”

  Did she know who they were or why they had come? Was she friendly, or an informer? Was she—or her husband—in the pay of the Germans? They sat down prudently at a table in the rear, and inasmuch as the girl said nothing, nobody spoke.

  Immediately an army corps of flies settled over them, swarmed about their heads, their faces, over their hands, buzzed in the air. It was agony to be so close to leaving, and have to sit still, doing nothing. Was the captain ever coming? He had said six; it was twenty past the hour. Had he been picked up by the Germans? Perhaps the sweep of the trawlers had been postponed for military reasons. Or worst of all, did the man feel that taking them along was a risk he did not care to endure, and did he hate to see them to say no?

  A dozen conjectures came to the mind of the Sergeant. Then the bell tinkled joyously, and a squat figure poked its way into the café. He waddled toward them with the walk of one whose life has been spent aboard ship. Greeting each one with the usual hand shake, he accepted the kisses of the girl upon his cheeks, still unshaven.

  “Allons.” Let’s go.

  The bell sounded as the door opened and they stepped into the street. The docks were only a block away. They could see the German sentries pacing back and forth at the gate.

  As usual, Gisèle took charge. She shoved the package into the arms of the Sergeant, stood on tiptoes, and kissed Fingers on both cheeks. The Sergeant bent over, and she threw both arms around him. There were tears in her big eyes as she kissed him.

  He wanted to say things, things she would always recall. But as ever at such moments, his French deserted him. He could only stammer.

  “Nous reviendrons.” We shall return.

  She clung to him until he set her gently on the ground. The Airedale, feeling the charged tension, sat lifting her paw. Gisèle glanced up at him, her eyes serious as usual. She smiled, and the gap in her front teeth was plainly visible.

  “Ouai. J’en suis sûr.”

  Then quickly, without a word more, she turned and marched down the Coulogne Road, her hair tossing on her shoulders in the wind, the yellow straw hat bobbing on the back of her head.

  The package in his hand, the Sergeant stood watching her. Courage, he thought, wears many uniforms. And none.

  CHAPTER 25

  THEY DID NOT ENTER the nearest gate to the docks, but went past with the captain and walked about half a mile across the ruined city to the outer harbor. It was easy to see why. The inner harbor was full of sunken wrecks, masts sticking from the water, vessels capsized in the mud—a British destroyer with half the stern blown off, a couple of French frigates, sticking up at strange angles; merchant ships; tugs; fishing boats, most of them badly damaged. Eventually they reached a destroyed lock to an inner basin. Here a German sentry held them up, glanced with indifference at their papers, and allowed them to pass across a plank to the maritime station where the daily cross-Channel steamers from Dover had once docked.

  The station itself was flattened, and they had to climb over a pile of masonry, then creep around huge shell holes, and so along the quay to the seaward end, where six small trawlers were berthed. The captain jumped heavily down to the deck of the third, with no question from the German sentries pacing back and forth. The two Englishmen and the dog followed. The vessel had a name on the stern: Marie-Louise, Calais.

  The captain stood on the deck bellowing, “Léon. Allô, Léon.”

  Instantly a grimy figure in a blue-denim coverall stuck his head up from below. His face was covered with black grease; evidently he had been working on the engine. With a malevolent glance he surveyed the two strangers and the dog as the captain descended the companionway.

  Several minutes later his head reappeared and he beckoned them down. The boat was divided into wooden compartments for the fish, with a winch for hauling the nets. The cabin house up front had a kind of wardroom underneath, with a couple of bunks and a small stove. The engines were forward. To make the Britishers more like sailors, the captain ordered them to put on the greasy coveralls that Léon, somewhat grudgingly, produced. Their smocks were dirtied, and they began to look the parts they were to play.

  Sending them on deck, the captain and Léon turned to the engines. As they emerged, the dog greeted them with delight, barking furiously. Glancing about, they observed there was activity on every trawler.

  The Sergeant had learned patience the hard way over years in the army. Yet this final wait as the vessels got ready to leave was hardest of all. Hidden in Madame Bonnet’s loft at the farm, he had only wanted to be on the way, somewhere, anywhere German patrols were not passing by continually day and night. Now, on the Marie-Louise, he could hardly force himself to lean back, relaxed, and wait. It was as difficult a thing as he had ever done.

  “Aha! I knew all this was far too easy,” said Fingers quietly. The Sergeant, perched on a bollard, turned. A German patrol was examining the nearest vessel, tromping below to be sure nobody was hidden away, then reappearing to check the crew lined up on deck.

  From the cabin came the spluttering of their engines. Other trawlers were starting up too, getting ready to cast off when passed by the German security. The patrol—an officer, a non-com with an automatic, and two armed soldiers—stepped from the next boat and came toward them. They jumped onto the deck of the Marie-Louise.

  What they saw as they boarded her was the usual French sailor in a dirty smock, arms folded, sitting on a bollard with a brown-and-black dog at his feet. Another in an equally dingy costume lounged on the rail, the tiniest butt of a cigarette between his teeth. Both badly needed a shave.

  The German officer looked at them with contempt and shouted, “Kapitän.”

  The head of the captain immediately appeared in the companionway. He stumbled up on deck, a spanner in one hand, mumbling something and saluting the officer in a negligent manner. The greeting was not precisely derisive but almost.

  The German stepped over and shouted below, “Hinauf.”

  Léon, covered with grease, came slowly and sullenly up on deck. The captain ranged them in line as the German strode over, took his identity card, slapped it open, closed it with a glance, and reached for the Sergeant’s. The test was over in one breath, the card was handed back, then Léon’s, and finally Fingers’—all returned by the German with rather a regretful air. Next, followed by Léon and the captain, he went below.

  Unable to sit still, the Sergeant rose and began unrolling a large fishing net, as they were doing in the adjoining trawler. Fingers joined him.

  “It’s being so cheerful,” he said in his ear, “as keeps me going. But this, I dunno....”

  The Germans could be heard below, poking about in the lockers, turning over the bunks, thumping the sides of the cabin in a search for stowaways. Then came a conversation, which became an argument and degenerated into a dispute. From above they could catch occasional words and phrases, enough for them to realize that the Marie-Louise was shipping an extra hand. Apparently the officer was demanding the reason, apparently unsatisfied with the answer.

  At last they all appeared on deck, talking, arguing, the captain rubbing his shoulder. He leaned down, grasping the net, going through an eloquent pantomime to indicate that he was unable to use his right arm. Up ahead, one of the trawlers was casting off, her engine churning gently, and the Sergeant observed her moving into mid-channel, soon followed by another vessel, and a third.

  The captain, with that peculiar talent of the French for creating a scene on any issue, was shouting violently at the German, who kept stubbornly shaking his head. He was obviously refusing permission to leave with a crew of three. Such were his orders, they could not be broken.

  The Sergeant had a picture of Fingers, rowing alone across the Channel, or himself, alon
e in a dory. By this time every trawler save theirs had slipped away from the jetty. At last, weary of the discussion, the German snatched at their identity cards and jumped up to the pier, followed by the non-com, evidently to consult a superior.

  The Sergeant understood the problem. One man could never row that heavy dory alone. So there stood the captain, feet apart, shaking his head and declaring he was suffering from arthritis, that he would not leave short of hands. No, he would never....

  “Ah, par exemple... non... je ne peux pas... peux... pas... impossible... imp... poss... ible....”

  The whole thing was a terrific act. The Sergeant felt he might well have saved it for the German security officer, now vanishing down the end of the pier, and not wasted it on the two immobile soldiers in the stern. However, like so many French, once he got wound up he was unable to stop. It was this flow of language which gave validity to the scene.

  Finally, after an eternal wait, the German officer could be seen down the quay. He came toward the vessel, the non-com several paces to the rear. Reaching the trawler, he sent the two soldiers off the boat with a wave of his hand, turned to the captain, and ordered him to line up the crew.

  “Léon,” bawled the captain down the companionway. The set of his head showed that he was elated at having won an argument with a German, even in a good cause, and even if he was risking his life.

  Scowling as usual, Léon appeared on deck.

  The German officer, carrying a large book, took their identity cards and checked off each name as he called them out. Then he entered them in the book.

  “Le Capitaine, Guiscard, Paul.” He handed over his papers.

  “Georges, Léon, Contremaître.”

  “Grandchamps, Émile-Louis, matelot.”

  “Dubois, Jean-Phillipe.”

  Then, shutting the book, he turned to the captain and declared in bad French that his trawler would be carefully checked the next morning on return.

  The captain was mollified. “Bon. Compris!” Next he turned his back on the German and addressed his quartermaster. “Léon. Vite. Léon, depêches-toi. Le moteur....”

  Léon, quite unhurried and as surly as ever, sauntered below, making a face at the back of the German climbing to the pier with his non-com. The Englishmen stood ready to haul in the lines fore and aft. The engine spluttered, roared. The captain, from the pilothouse, gave an order into the speaking tube, and a dock worker on the pier threw off the lines as the boat glided ever so gently away from the stone jetty. In several minutes they were moving down the outer harbor, taking their place at the end of the line of trawlers moving out to sea.

  The wind had died away, a good sign. The summer night cast a magic over the water, the sky ahead was golden, the Channel a mirror. Faint columns of smoke still rose from the smoldering town, making a kind of pattern above the shore line.

  The Sergeant leaned over the rail, the dog beside him. Good-by, France. Good-by, Monsieur the veterinary. Good-by, Gisèle. Good-by until we meet again. As we surely shall.

  Now they were leaving the breakwater, bombed half to pieces, then out of the harbor mouth. There, directly ahead, plain and sharp in the evening light, were the cliffs of Dover, with the town nestling along the water. He could almost see the streets, the houses.

  “Look back, Sarge, I think we’re being followed.”

  He swung quickly around. There was the roar of a Daimler engine, and a German Schnellboot, or E-boat, a fast seventeen-foot torpedo boat, capable of eighteen knots, raced up the column of slow-moving trawlers, sending an enormous cloud of spray from her pointed bow. She took her place at the head of the file and led them out into the open sea.

  “This isn’t going to be so easy, Sarge,” said Fingers.

  CHAPTER 26

  THE CAPTAIN REALLY DID have arthritis badly. Not all his indignation with the German security officer was an act. He betrayed the pain in his right arm directly they had drifted about five miles offshore and slung out the nets. He worked with the rest, but only with great difficulty. Dusk came, then blackness, as the trawler lay motionless on the flat sea. The three men hung over the rail, watching the E-boat bird-dogging them every minute.

  The captain, it appeared, had for many years been an officer on a Channel steamer and, as he explained, “I speak a kind of English.”

  Worried about his return to port and the checkup, the Sergeant asked how he would manage with the German security patrol the next morning at Calais.

  “Pouf! These Germans... all alike... no imagination.” His exhilaration at outwitting the security officer was only too obvious. “They check Marie-Louise with attention; the others, not. So I take a man from two different boats. I take your identity papers. In early morning, they check crew from the book. Le Capitaine, Guiscard, Paul. Georges, Léon, Contremaître. Grandchamps, Emile-Louis, matelot.” He stood stiffly, imitating the German officer checking them with an imaginary book in his hand, mocking perfectly the horrible French accent of his enemy. For just a second he was the security officer there on deck beside the Sergeant.

  It was funny but dangerous. He was gambling with his own life and Léon’s. The Sergeant shook his head. “Here’s hoping it works out that way. But then, if we take your dory and row off, surely they’ll notice it’s gone.”

  “Of course they notice. My fran’ there in Celeste, he lend me his dory. They not check Celeste carefully, so O.K. Hein?”

  “I hope so. You French are a brave race.” He was thinking of the stout-hearted old veterinary and a fourteen-year-old Girl Scout.

  The captain spat into the sea, thus indicating that to outwit a German was what made life endurable for a Frenchman these days. “Ouf....” He shrugged his shoulders, half in denial of the charge. “Franchman like everyone else—some good, some bad. Las’ month a fran’ of mine here in Calais, he have new trawler, he make wan voyage to Dunkerque, bring back fifty, sixty soldiers. Then he... how you say?... sabotage....”

  “Yes, sabotage, damage....”

  “Oui, oui. He put his engine to the bad, so he won’t be obliged to return to Dunkerque. Many Franchman in German Stalag now. Not good. So... what time? At midnight, the Germans tired, they sleep. You leave then.”

  But at midnight, with the nets out and Marie-Louise slowly sweeping some six or seven miles from shore, the E-boat was as aggressive as ever. Her tactics were simple. She floated dark and motionless for fifteen or twenty minutes. Then, without warning, her searchlights would stab the entire fleet, and she would patrol up and down for ten minutes or so. The captain was by this time as far from shore as he dared to get.

  When the E-boat was past and several miles away, the captain carefully hailed a nearby trawler, evidently waiting. This vessel drifted over, shielding them from the E-boat. Their dory was lowered to the water, and a sailor transferred from the other boat to Marie-Louise.

  They were ready. The identity cards had been handed over. The two Englishmen shook hands with the captain and thanked him. He seemed pleased and unusually jovial, quite a different character from the silent, gloomy sea captain who met them first in the little café in Calais. Slapping both on the back, he wished them luck. The dog, seeing Fingers climbing into the dory and the Sergeant about to leave, began to run up and down the slippery deck, barking. Everyone aboard Marie-Louise grabbed at her, as the noise could be heard for miles across the water. The Sergeant finally picked her up, panting.

  “You’re going along, old girl, don’t worry, you’re coming too.”

  He handed her over the rail to Fingers, who was balancing himself with difficulty in the dory, and climbed down. A hand was laid upon his shoulder. It was the surly Léon.

  “Bonne chance! Bonne chance, mon vieux.”

  Then they were afloat, rowing vigorously away from Marie-Louise, from the trawler fleet, from the E-boat, from the Capitaine Guiscard, Paul, from the shores of France. The oarlocks had been covered with cloth, yet every stroke seemed to ring through the quiet night. With a small flashlight and a compa
ss the veterinary had given them, they struck due north. Then the roar of the E-boat’s engines sounded loudly a few miles off.

  Had they heard the bark of the dog? The warship seemed to be heading toward them, so they pulled with all their strength into the blackness. Her searchlights began stabbing at the various trawlers, first one, then another. The Sergeant, watching anxiously, figured they might pass a few yards astern if they kept on course.

  “Lie down, ship that oar and lie down. It’s easier to spot a moving object.”

  They lay down, the dog nestled between them, as the noise of the E-boat grew louder and louder. The searchlights kept stabbing the waters, glancing over the ships, getting nearer and nearer. Right then, several squadrons of R.A.F. bombers, making a sweep of the French coast, could be heard. The lights of the E-boat went out quickly, her engines were muffled. The two Britishers sprang again to their oars, rowing desperately in the darkness. The sound of the throbbing engines grew fainter. They crept farther and farther away, pushing with all their strength for half an hour before they dared to rest. They needed a rest. Both had blistered hands.

  The Sergeant glanced at his watch. It was two-thirty in the morning. They resumed rowing, less vigorously. It was three o’clock, and soon faint streaks of light could be seen in the east. Surely some passing tanker, freighter, or patrol boat, returning from sweeping the Dutch coast, would pick them up. Yet, as day broke, no vessels were visible on the vast expanse of the Channel, save the trawler fleet in the far distance, returning to Calais. They were still six or seven miles from Dover, he estimated.

  Planes had been overheard much of the night, both British and German. Shortly after dawn, Spits jumped a flight of Ju 88’s, returning to the Continent after a night over London. There was a fearful clatter above, the guns of the Germans and the cannon of the Spitfires going all out. Most of the fight was too high to be seen, but they caught occasional glimpses of planes through the vapor clouds. Then out of the morning mist a plane with a black cross fluttered, descended, dropped to the sea. Seconds later a parachute opened, and a flyer came slowly down.